25. Recognition, Social Systems and Critical Theory

For a comprehensive reconstruction of the public sphere that engages systematically with the relevance of sociological explanations of institutions and social systems, see Cohen and Arato (1992).

AGIL stands for adaptation (A), goal attainment (G), societal integration (I) and latent pattern maintenance (L). On the level of the social system, they reflect the subsystems of economy (A), of polity (G), of civil society and solidarity (I), and of collective values, which also include trust (L).

The pernicious “utopianism” typical of certain strands of socialist thought is succinctly pointed out by Claus Offe (1997: 91, n. 9) and André Gorz (2012: 8).

In an uncanny mode Critical Theory still operates within Hegel’s system of logic: the critique of modernity fashioned after Adorno and Horkheimer resembles critique at the level of the doctrine of “being” (i.e. subsuming all facets of a complex reality to the abstract unity of domination), Habermas’s “system”—“life-world” dualism at the level of the logical category of “essence”, (emphasizing the distinction between unity [life-world] and difference [system]), while Honneth’s research program of recognition seems to operate on the level of the doctrine of the concept (i.e. “unity-in-difference” since the “good” is forged within a plural and complex set of differentiated social institutions and social systems). Although schematic, this analogy may prove instructive in disclosing the logical pattern of critique launched by the Frankfurt School.

For Adorno (2000: 37) Durkheim’s hypostasized version of the “social” is part of a dualism, the other nonreducible element of which is methodological individualism.

Nisbet (1974: 273) thinks that the New Left drew inspiration from Durkheim’s theory of the state in its critique of the bureaucratized Soviet State. I am not in a position to confirm Nisbet’s claim. Marcuse, for instance, in a similar critique does not refer to Durkheim; rather, he resorts to Aristotle, Hegel and Tönnies (sources of Durkheim’s ethical division of labor) to juxtapose to Soviet Marxism a model of a “free and rational organization of social labour” in convergence between ethics and economics (Marcuse 1971: 213). Meštrović (1993: 84–6) for his part attempts a loose affinity between Durkheim’s skeptical provisos against pragmatism and Max Horkheimer’s similar critique.

Horkheimer (1972: 192) rescues, momentarily, Durkheim from the empiricist brand of sociology, yet he misses the Kantian dimension of indeterminacy as freedom (Stedman Jones 2001: 107–110) as well as the normatively driven request for a science of society aimed to curb anomie.

A sympathetic to the Durkheim–Adorno affinity interpretation by Garde Hagens (2006), reproduced the very irreconcilable elements in their theories and attaches itself to a conservative image of Durkheim’s social theory.

For a similar formulation see Durkheim (1974: 38).

Interestingly enough, Durkheim’s conception of the organic as a configuration that surpasses its legalistic and contractual entanglements in modern society is raised by the vitalist De Chardin: “We feel that the relation between Society and Social Organism is no longer a matter of symbolism but must be treated in realistic terms. But the question then arises as to how, in this shifting of values, this passage from the legalistic to the organic, we may correctly apply the analogy. How are we to escape from metaphor without falling into the trap of establishing absurd and oversimplified parallels which would make of the human species no more than a kind of composite, living animal? This is the difficulty which modern sociology encounters” (1964: 155–56). Although obviously tethered to irrationalism, such appreciations do expose critical theory’s shortsighted vision of the moral surplus of organic solidarity.

Georg Simmel had also refuted the claim that material interests can be decoupled from values: “As the content of the meaning of history, historical materialism has selected material interests—a choice that is, in a certain sense, utterly unidealistic. But historical materialism fails to recognize that even material interests motivate history only as mental values” (Simmel 1977: 200).

The distinction, but in a different context, between “system integration” and “social integration” comes from David Lockwood (1964).

For a similar strategy against Luhmann from the perspective of civil disobedience, see Frankenberg (1997).

The odd absence of sociology is most conspicuous in Horkheimer critical theory of society (1974a, b; 1995).

For Luhmann the moral code respect/disrespect (adopted by Honneth) is a form of society’s ethical self-description, yet paradoxical as the code is used simultaneously by both “ego” and “alter”: individuals, groups or collectivities claim “respect” as victims of “disrespect” vis-à-vis an alter (individual or collective). To avoid this moral “war of all against all” ethics becomes a differentiated system (in business, in politics, in the market, in sustainability projects, in journalism among others). This is due to the asymmetrical placement of “ego” and “alter” in differentiated niches that communicate an “amoral coordination of morality” (2012: 149).

For systematic affinities between the two, see Gangas (2007).

Honneth writes: “Discursive spaces for the reciprocal correction of consumer needs have only emerged where social life-situations have not grown so far apart as to prevent consumers from putting themselves in each other’s position” (2014b: 222). Empirical proof of Honneth’s claim can be found in Wilkinson and Pickett (2009).

For a critique of this neo-idealist twist to Critical Theory, see Thompson (2014).

For an attempt to reconstruct the category of reification beyond its materialist dent, see Honneth (2008).

Habermas (1996) rescues the law as the “third realm” of validity that partakes of both the lifework (justice) and the system (validity of the law). Brunkhorst reactivates the moral ideal of solidarity but pursues its normative reconstruction within the systems theory agenda wrought by Luhmann. Hauke Brunkhorst expounds on Habermas’s mediating function of law (between system and life-world) arguing that: “The social function of law does not, however—as Emile Durkheim had already keenly observed—consist in eliminating the illegal, but rather in generating certainty of expectations through the dependable distinction between legal and illegal, and in increasing opportunities for fighting very many more conflicts with a simultaneously declining willingness to resort to violence. Law makes it possible to live with conflicts instead of dying in them, and permits the expansion of freedom, which stands and falls with the freedom to conflict” (2005: 148 [original emphasis]). Unfortunately, Brunkhorst’s highly interesting argument with its defense of constitutions (as a fusion of system and lifeworld) cannot be taken up further here. His qualified response to Luhmann is roughly this: differentiated systems presuppose variation in order to build internal system complexity and reduce outer complexity. Variation is accomplished by means of productive individuals and their respective social roles. Exclusion of large segments of the population jeopardizes the self-steering capacity for internal complexity, leaving each system in limbo as it can take recourse only to crude binary and less complex distinctions (e.g. educational merit via the pass/failure of tests only). The functionlessness of the system is equivalent to the decline in democracy. For this reasoning see Brunkhorst (2005: 90). In a sense, Luhmann recognizes this problem when he renders democracy a condition for functional differentiation (Luhmann 2004: 304).

Sober Marxists like Horkheimer (1978: 233) express their disdain for much of what today is called “radical Left” that abandons all too easily the accomplishments of bourgeois society.

For an instructive summary of these two epistemologies see Weber (1975: 66–67).

For Horkheimer bourgeois society understands itself through the “disjunctive judgment” (either/or) whereas critical theory unfolds the “existential judgment” (1972: 227), which is similar to Marcuse’s formulations about the a priori values of critical theory. Brunkhorst (1996: 100) sees Foucault and Luhmann as symptoms of what Adorno and Horkheimer (1979: 27) had anticipated and lamented, namely of “the world as a gigantic analytic judgment”.

Contrary to what McCarthy (1991: Chap. 6) chides as the overestimated seducement of systems theory, I agree with Kjaer (2006: 77, n. 87) that Luhmann’s concept of “balance” is better suited to alert us to, as well as to explain, the asymmetries between systems, as opposed to Habermas’s imagery of colonization. As Luhmann writes: “In brief, the autonomy of functional systems secured by their own binary codings excluded metaregulation by a moral supercode, and morality itself accepted, indeed remoralized this condition. For now code sabotage becomes a moral problem—for instance, corruption in politics and law or doping in sport or venal love or cheating with data of empirical research. The higher amorality of functional codes was recognized by morality itself; but this also meant renouncing the idea of the moral integration of society” (2013: 281 [original emphasis]).